Fiction, Games, and Game Design

Monthly Archives: April 2015

After spending a couple of hours searching I was surprised to find that there wasn’t any sort of reference to tell you which Munchkin games are compatible, other than Munchkin Thingies, a free download from Steve Jackson Games. The problem is that it’s a thorough 15-page slog, which makes it fantastic for researching your next purchase but useless when staring indecisively at the FLGS shelf. To that end I used the headings in Thingies to make this handy reference table. Now you can tell at a glance which new Munchkin games are compatible with the ones you already have.

Game

Classes

Races

Unique

Munchkin

X

X

Munchkin Apocalypse

X

Munchkin Axe Cop

X

Munchkin Bites!

X

Munchkin Booty

X

Accents

Munchkin Conan

X

X

Birthrights

Munchkin Cthulhu

X

Munchkin Fu

X

The Good, the Bad and the Munchkin

X

Munchkin Grimm Tidings

X

Munchkin Impossible

X

Loyalties

Munchkin Legends

X

X

Moop’s Monster Mashup

X

X

Munchkin Oz

X

Munchkin Pathfinder

X

Factions

Munchkin Shakespeare

X

X

Munchkin Spell Skool

X

Classes are called “Clubs”

Star Munchkin

X

X

Munchkin Steampunk

X

Super Munchkin

X

Munchkin Zombies

Mojos

Last updated 2017-07-06.

The material presented here is my original creation, intended for use with Munchkin from Steve Jackson Games. This material is not official and is not endorsed by Steve Jackson Games.

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In playing my Fiend Warlock at D&D Encounters I made an exciting discovery: in D&D 5e temporary HP work exactly like they do in 4e, except that they last all day or until consumed, rather than evaporating after 5 minutes. That means that Shyui could feasibly start subsequent fights already shielded by THP. The problem is that my character sheet had no clear way to track any leftover THP from session to session. To remedy the situation I added a small THP section to the wounds box on each of them.

Those links, as well as links to all of my game aids, are always available on my Downloads page above, which also tells you about the most recent changes to them.

As I added more characters to my Character Library spreadsheet I found several shortcomings, not the least of which is the lack of space for saving throw bonuses. I have extensively rebuilt it multiple times in the past week and think I may finally have it perfect. To make certain of that my wife and I are both putting lots of characters into them, so I should be uploading a final version within the next couple of days.

Since two of my Encounters characters are traveling merchants, I made several versions of full-page inventory logs. I think they may be complete, but I’d like to play a couple of sessions using them to be sure of that before uploading them.

After that I’ll be putting the final touches on my GURPS Character Creator. I don’t foresee that taking more than an afternoon, but will want to make a bunch of characters to test it before uploading it.

The D&D 5e version is proving to be far more complicated than I expected even though I am being careful to not infringe upon Wizards’ copyright (so I don’t need to factor in the Tough feat, for example, other than including a box where players can specify any extra HP mods). As an added bonus it means that it won’t have to be updated every time a new book releases, other than adding any new races or classes to the data tables, which is trivial. Adding the races introduced for the Princes of the Apocalypse season of D&D Adventurers’ League was a bit messy since I hadn’t thought to future-proof my formulas, but have done so since, so adding new ones in the future will be easy.

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My parents raised the four of us to be fully independent. My brother and I do housework, and my younger sister helped Dad with car repairs after the crash made me unable to. That’s why it’s so hard for me to ask for help when I need it. Even after 16 years together, I still sometimes push myself beyond my limits rather than asking my wife Lura for help when I should – not nearly as often as I used to, but it does still happen.

I have finally admitted to myself that now is one of those times. Our surprisingly durable Kia Sedona mini-van has finally had it. Since Lura has been out of work for nearly two years, we can’t afford to replace it – not even with a cheap car. My meager Disability payments only go so far. Without a new vehicle, and fast, we will be unable to continue running our Pokémon League, nor will Lura ever be able to find a job. Currently friends are taking us to Hillside for League and D&D Adventurers’ League, but we can’t bum rides forever.

Once I finally get the new starter installed the van will run again, but we will have to put oil in it every time we want to go anywhere – in the driveway before we leave, and in whatever parking lot before heading home. Even that is only a temporary solution. It could finishing dying at any moment, leaving us stranded by the side of the road.

The situation is further complicated by my chronic pain issues. Because of them I can’t comfortably climb in and out of cars or SUVs, so mini-vans and small trucks (like my beloved late Ranger) are our only choice. Unfortunately, as we have learned from our Sedona, used mini-vans come in two flavors: expensive and lemon. Like tattoos, good ones aren’t cheap, and cheap ones aren’t good.

Thankfully, my parents have offered part of their share of the sale of my late maternal grandmother’s house, but that only gets us most of the way to a decent van and halfway to a good one. That’s where we need your help. If you can offer even a couple of dollars it will go a long way towards getting us back safely on the road. Even if all you have to offer are your prayers, we are grateful.

I have uploaded several new aids for D&D 5e. The first two are different versions of a list of conditions: one to be shared by the whole table, and one for individual players. The table version has every condition, paraphrased and converted to second person to hopefully make them easier to understand. With one or two on the table there should be less need for players on both sides of the screen to stall the game while looking up rules. The player version has a condensed list so that four of them can fit on a page.That way each player can have a list of the most common conditions, and can reference the table version for the others.

The other aid is a D&D 5e character library in the form of an OpenOffice spreadsheet, which is a convenient place to keep any number of characters without using up a ton of disk space (important for Dropbox and thumbdrives). There is also a Google Docs version for players who like to keep everything in the cloud. I see the latter as also being used by GMs to keep all of their players’ characters in one place for easy reference.

My next character library will likely be for GURPS since it will be easy, and then I’ll make one for HackMaster 5e for the sake of my current campaign. I may even make one for OVA eventually since I do have about a dozen characters for it. My current focus is on revising my GURPS character creator and finishing the D&D one. That said, the D&D character library is a result of my drive to free up some space on my nearly-full Dropbox, so I may well make the other libraries as part of that process.

UPDATE 2015-04-16: Added space for saving throw values and proficiences. I truly don’t see how I overlooked that before, but it’s there now.